Barack Obama Quotes

I think all presidents should take the long view of history.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Good leadership is to know when to go, and you only succeed as a good leader if you've transported someone else in and the company gets stronger. Then you've succeeded as leader.

Presidential legacies are valuable things, too valuable to be left up to historians.

The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.

A statesman is a politician who’s been dead ten or fifteen years.

The men who have had great vision in the White House are those who are most enduring in the minds of the public. America loves visionary Presidents.

The Presidency is not a showman’s job. You can’t make a Teddy Roosevelt out of me.

If every senator looks into the mirror and sees a future president, then every president looks into that same mirror and sees himself on Mount Rushmore.

I think that the great presidents have always been a little more clever.

I think in many ways president Trump views himself as someone who has the ability to overcome every obstacle and to do something that no other president has been able to do. And I think that's the way he views himself, as it relates to his legacy and how history will view him.

Statesman create; ordinary leaders consume. The ordinary leader is satisfied with ameliorating the environment, not transforming it; a statesman must be a visionary and an educator.

Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist, in which case he can do what he likes and get away with it; or else he has to be a true empowerer who can bring out the best in others.

It has been very humbling and gratifying to have these men as our role models. Your generation enabled America to close out the twentieth century as the greatest nation in the history of mankind, the only remaining superpower, the world's leading economy and the world's most respected and feared military force in the world - respected by our friends and allies, feared by our adversaries.

Often times the best military leaders were soldiers.

Those [presidents] who were strongest intellectually were also strongest spiritually.

There are many ways to study Walt Disney, but I think learning about Walt as a leader probably has had the biggest impact on me.

You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.

It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. Many people who approach the area of vision in leadership have it backwards. They believe that if the cause is good enough, people will automatically buy in and follow. But that's not how leadership works. People don't follow worthy causes; they follow worthy leaders with a cause they can believe in. They buy into the leader first.

A good leader takes care of those in their charge. A bad leader takes charge of those in their care.

Who aspires to remain leader must keep in advance of his column. His fear must not play traitor to his occasions. The instant he falls into line with his followers, a bolder spirit may throw himself at the head of the movement initiated, and in that moment his leadership is gone.

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation

Charisma is the result of effective leadership, not the other way around.